PUNDITRY, like sportswriting, is rooted in traditions and expectations. People who love a particular sport and people who love elections just "know" that certain things are true and that other things are highly likely. They offer predictions based on their belief in the reliability of what has come before.

The 2000 campaign has been confounding to pundits not just because there are, oh, 1.2 million or so tracking polls. Election night will be fun for many reasons, not the least of which is that many venerable assumptions about politics are cracking apart this year.

Here are some assumptions that have been proved wrong and others that might go by the board after the returns are in:

-- We act as if things that were true in the last election will be true in the next one. This year, it was assumed that if a state was Democratic enough to vote for Michael Dukakis in 1988 -- he carried only 10 -- it had to be safe for Al Gore. Not so. Gore has had to work his heart out in Wisconsin, Washington, Minnesota and West Virginia, among other places that the pundits put in the Democratic column. Similarly, some Republicans were shocked that Florida -- long considered a Republican bastion -- has bedeviled George W. Bush.

A lot of things are going on: The issues change, the demographics change (people move in and out of states) and voters change their minds about where they take their cues.

-- Low turnout always means the Democrats are staying home. This is an old assumption, based on the broadly accurate premise that upscale people are the most likely to vote, and that upscale people tend to be more Republican than their poorer neighbors. In the past, Republicans prayed for rain on Election day; a couple of years back, when several key congressional races in Ohio and Kentucky were in the balance, a Republican operative called me around noon to say with glee, "It's good news for us. It's raining all across the Ohio Valley."

It's perfectly possible these assumptions will hold up this year, because Republicans seem so eager to recapture the White House from Bill Clinton. But don't count on it. It might mean a replay of the 1998 elections, when Republicans had a hard time getting their base out and Democrats didn't. An energized union movement is increasingly adept at turning out Democratic votes, and the NAACP and environmental groups are working hard this year, too. Republicans know this, which is why they're putting much more money into turning out their faithful this year.

-- An issue that works in one campaign will work the same way the next time. The Republicans won elections for two decades after the Civil War by urging Union Army veterans to "vote as they shot." The Democrats won seven of nine presidential elections after the Depression by running against Herbert Hoover.

But not every issue is like the Civil War or the Depression. In 1996, Bill Clinton did very well among suburban voters because of a panoply of issues, including his support for gun control. This year may be different because the newly energized NRA has gone all out for Bush. As Richard Moore, president of the city commission in Gallipolis, Ohio, says, some voters "fear that if Gore is elected, they'll have to register all their guns." Gore is worried enough that he soft-pedaled his position on guns.

-- The losing party always suffers from the gender gap. When Democrats win, it's said that Republicans have a terrible problem winning the votes of women. When Republicans win, it's said that Democrats have a terrible problem with white men.

But the gender gap can stay exactly the same from one election to another and either statement can be justified. The interesting questions are whether the gender gap grows or narrows, and why.

-- You can always count on close elections to be close on Election night. It's been said for weeks that this is one of the closest elections in recent history. That's true. But it's quite possible that the final result will not be close at all, either because one side will turn out in larger numbers than the other, or because of a large shift by undecided voters in one direction.

So have mercy on the prognosticators, whether they are pundits or your neighbors.